Youtube Direct – A great platform to power-up citizen video journalism

jdb — Wed, 18 Nov 2009 02:36:03 +0000

Although citizen journalism has been growing by leaps and bounds empowered by sites like Digg, Twitter, Wikipedia, Youtube and others. Youtube’s focussed entry into this space could be potentially game changing. Today Google announced the launch of Youtube Direct, a service primarily targeted towards Google’s existing news media partners, but which can potentially become a platform to launch and support citizen journalists. Currently, the service comes with a simple workflow to moderate uploaded content and also to directly upload videos to Youtube (without having to leave the web-site in question). Currently, the offering is primarily targeted towards Google’s existing news partners and as such does not provide a comprehensive framework for citizen reporting, just yet. However, Google has made the framework open-source in the hopes of having developers contribute and enrich the product.

In order to build a robust work-flow for citizen reporting the moderation tool must be extended beyond its current scope. It must support two forms of moderation – 1) a decentralized one where others users on one’s site can rank and categorize videos and 2) a centralized one, like the one they provide now but extended further to support large number of file uploads. Additionally, it will also be great if the search capability for videos is narrowed to search within a specific site’s content. Finally, Youtube must support much faster uploads from cameras phone (see offerings from Elemental Technologies).

With these extensions in place, Youtube can look to become the platform that will launch and support the next generation of news media sites.

Youtube + Ooyala – The complete solution to video monetization

Youtube + Ooyala – The complete solution to video monetization

jdb — Mon, 16 Nov 2009 02:19:53 +0000

Ever since Google bought Youtube the focus has been on making Youtube profitable. Considering that 85% of US Internet users are engaging in some form of online video (source: FOX News Technology) coupled with the fact that Youtube already has some key things working for it (an ever growing global user base, comprehensive user data and Google is driving Youtube), Youtube is sitting on a perennial gold mine. Youtube can however accelerate its accent if it starts to incorporate one of the capabilities being developed by newer startup called Ooyala.

Ooyala, a Silicon Valley company, has built a service to monetize video streams in more ways than just showing text based ads as Youtube does today. Ooyala has made it possible for companies to tag video content so that customers can click on something they see on the video to get additional information about a product/service and possibly even buy it. As an example, if someone were watching an interview of their favorite actress, that video content could be tagged such that simply clicking on the actress’ dress say, would unobtrusively enable to user to find out more about the dress and possibly buy the dress.

Google with its wealth of user information is already identifying videos for users based on users’ preferences. Combine this with the capability Ooyala provides, Google could serve up a lot of tagged content that users can simply click through and buy giving the video creators and Youtube a cut of the profits.

TechSized » Youtube

Youtube Direct – A great platform to power-up citizen video journalism

Youtube + Ooyala – The complete solution to video monetization